offered to set me up in business!" continued Hogan, feeling aggrieved
at Fortune for her partiality. "Nobody even offered to give me a
start in life. I have to work hard, and that's all the good it does."

The fact was that Hogan had not done a whole day's work for years.
But such men are very apt to deceive themselves and possibly he
imagined himself a hard-working man.

"It's disgusting to see the airs that boy puts on," he continued to
soliloquize. "It's nothing but luck. He can't help getting on, with
everybody to help him. Why didn't he let me sleep in his place
to-night? It wouldn't have cost him a cent."

Then Hogan drifted off into calculations of how much money Joe was
making by his business. He knew the prices charged for meals and
that they afforded a large margin of profit.

The more he thought of it, the more impressed he was with the extent
of Joe's luck.

"The boy must be making his fortune," he said to himself. "Why, he
can't help clearing from one to two hundred dollars a week--perhaps
more. It's a money-making business, there's no doubt of it. Why
couldn't he take me in as partner? That would set me on my legs
again, and in time I'd be rich. I'd make him sell out, and get the
whole thing after awhile."

So Hogan persuaded himself into the conviction that Joe ought to have
accepted him as partner, though why this should be, since his only
claim rested on his successful attempt to defraud him in New York, it